An Ohio woman shared a video of her receiving devastating news just a few weeks after experiencing a heart attack: her insurance refused to pay her hospital bill. The company even sent an official letter explaining why it wouldn’t cover the life-saving procedure she had.
TikTok user Maresimpson, Maria, broke down the situation on her personal account, including the letter she received from her health insurance company, CIGNA. Maria explains that she had a SCAD heart—which is when the middle of your coronary artery splits or tears—while she was working out. It comes as a surprise too, considering Maria is just 37-years-old.
“After carefully reviewing the information, we determine the service is not medically necessary,” Maria reads. “So they don’t think that saving my life was medically necessary,” Maria says.
Maria breaks down some of the cost, which included a two-day stay in the hospital, being admitted into the ER, the “cath lab” and “all the stuff in between.” And for that? She writes in the caption of her TikTok video, “My bill is at $110,000 and counting.”
On top of that, she’ll need more care. She says she’s sure there are “more bills coming” but CIGNA isn’t even prepared to pay the amount that helped save her life!
Viewers let their outrage be known online
Given how little Americans actually like the U.S. healthcare system, it’s unsurprising Maria’s TikTok video drew numerous comments expressing dissatisfaction with her situation and the outrageous bill as a whole. “We need universal healthcare,” one viewer wrote.
A common theme among the comments was images of Luigi Mangione, an American who fatally shot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. One commenter called Luigi the “saint of medical bills.”
Others tried to offer solutions to Maria’s problem, chief among them from a viewer who claimed they had“13 years in billing.” According to the commenter, the hospital will then “send it back with a medical necessity diagnosis” once Maria requests the hospital to “code it correctly.” Maria responded, saying she “will definitely be fighting this.”
One user shared her experience having breast cancer while also having CIGNA and stated she had to “fight them on everything.”
Maria’s story is yet another nail in the coffin of the American healthcare system, which is continuously difficult to work with or outright malicious. If there’s one thing you can trust, it’s that Americans will share just how much they hate American healthcare.
